Erroneous Description and Subsequent Illegal Sale of an Autocruise Starblazer Motorhome by Marquis Motorhomes
June - July 2014

The Initial Account of Events and Complaints

Barry and Margaret Williamson
14 July 2014

The Previous File: Introduction and Overview

The Next File: Note for the Marquis Group Aftercare Manager

See all Nine Files at: Marquis Malpractice 

This is the almost unbelievable story of how Marquis Motorhomes failed to deal with any of the several complaints we made arising from their mis-advertising and mis-selling of an overweight motorhome from their South Yorkshire branch and how they refused to refund the money we had paid without inordinate delay and draconian conditions. 

The following detailed initial account and complaints was given to the Sales Manager of the Dinnington South Yorkshire branch of Marquis Motorhomes at a meeting on 14 July 2014. He said he would forward the document to his superior at Winchester Road, Lower Upham, Southampton, Hampshire SO32 1HA. This man turned out to be one Alan Doherty who had the role of 'Group Aftercare Manager'. What irony lay in that title!

Background: Barry is the holder of a B+E driving licence. At the time of initially consulting the Marquis website, we were in Sparta in southern Greece, travelling with a 3500 kg VW Crafter van and pulling a 1350 kg Lunar Quasar 534 caravan.

We planned to change to a motorhome with a GVW of less than 3500 kg. Apart from the limitations of Barry's driving licence, there are an increasing number of countries in mainland Europe which place restrictions and greatly increase road tolls for vehicles over 3500 kg.

Early June 2014: Scanning the web, we focussed on buying a motorhome of less than 3500 kg, with a garage and preferably an overcab bed. We located the Autocruise Starblazer on the Marquis website (which has excellent search facilities). It exactly fitted our needs and it specifically mentioned a GVW of 3400 kg.

8 June 2014: We completed the enquiry form on the Marquis website, specifying the motorhome that interested us (No 21383) and saying we were based in Yorkshire.

9 June 2014: John Ivell, Sales Manager at the South Yorkshire Branch of Marquis Motorhomes in Dinnington, replied by email that the details of our query had been passed on to “Mike Gratton in Sales”.

10 June 2014: Mike Gratton emailed, saying he had telephoned but got no reply. Knowing that we were often out of range of the mobile phone, we emailed him to explain that we were travelling in Greece but emphasised that we “were really keen to change from a caravan to a motorhome, under 3500 kg with a garage”.

11 June 2014: We telephoned Mike Gratton but it was his day off.

12 June 2014: We telephoned again but Mike Gratton was busy and we were passed to Andy Milne, who was very helpful. He explained that we could reserve the Autocruise motorhome with a returnable deposit of £250. This we immediately paid by debit card.

On the same date, we took the overnight ferry from Patras in Greece to Ancona in northeast Italy, to continue the journey to the UK. The distance from Sparta to Dinnington is about 1,500 miles.

20 June 2014: We emailed that we planned “to inspect the Autocruise Starblazer on Monday morning, 23 June”.

23 June 2014: During the inspection of the Starblazer, Mike Gratton was quite open about his inexperience with motorhomes - and this showed. His expertise lay with caravans and he had only recently been asked to sell motorhomes. Mike had to call in Andy Milne to answer some of our questions and to explain a number of items.

It was only later that we discovered certain key additional features of the motorhome: for example, it had solar panels, a second leisure battery, separate charging of the leisure and engine batteries, an inverter, cruise control, electrically-operated mirrors. Mike Gratton was unaware of these items, and he thought the water was only heated by gas; later we found it was also electrically heated.

We remained uncertain about how the water system worked; there was an external filling point which required its own 12-volt immersion pump into an Aquaroll, but it turned out there was also an on-board water tank with its own pump. How the two systems interacted was unknown.

During this inspection we specifically asked Mike Gratton about the motorhome's GVW. He replied “3.4 tons”.

After this inspection, Mike Gratton proposed that he accompany Barry on a lengthy test drive around the Dinnington area and stretches of the A57.

We then paid £1,750 by debit card, the balance of the required £2,000 deposit. The motorhome was to be prepared for collection on 8 July 2014.

3 July 2014: We called at Marquis to pay Mike Gratton the balance of the total cost of the motorhome, including VED and the part-exchange allowance £8,247 on our Lunar Quasar caravan.

We found that the Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) had been charged for 6 months, without consultation, and we asked for that to be changed to 12 months. We noticed that this corrected entry was for £230, the correct rate for 12 months for a private light goods vehicle under 3500 kg. That was reassuring. The final  5-figure payment was then paid.

8 July 2014: Arriving to deliver the caravan and collect the motorhome, its main features were again explained to us, this time by Steve. He had the same limitations as Mike Gratton, in that his experience was with caravans and he knew little about this particular motorhome. He was quite frank about this.

In the afternoon Barry drove the motorhome back to our campsite in Worksop and later looked through the wallet of information provided by Marquis. Hidden amongst the assorted booklets was a single sheet of paper, a certificate indicating that the GVW had been upgraded from the manufacturer's 3500 kg to 4150 kg by adding rear air suspension.

9 July 2014: We spoke to Sales Manager John Ivell on the telephone, arranging to meet him at 11 am that morning. During a very useful discussion, he openly acknowledged that the motorhome had been incorrectly advertised on the Marquis website and elsewhere at 3400 kg, and sold as such. He also acknowledged that, because of the recent history of the organisation, some staff had a limited knowledge and experience of motorhomes.

He proposed to look into the possibility of having the motorhome re-classified as 3500 kg. Two men would collect it at 10 am on Monday, 14 July, from the Worksop campsite when it would need to be empty in order to measure its unladen weight.

If reclassification were not feasible, he would consider other possibilities.

11 July 2014: Keen to make some progress, Barry drove the motorhome (illegally!) to a nearby weighbridge in Worksop. The resulting certificate showed that the unladen weight was 3460 kg! We telephoned John Ivell and was initially asked by the receptionist, and then by John Ivell himself, to take the matter up with Mike Gratton.

Instead I arranged to meet John Ivell on Monday 14 July at 11 am and he cancelled his own plan to have the motorhome weighed.

12 July 2014: Preparing for the meeting, we checked the VED disk on the motorhome. It was for £165, the rate for a Private Heavy Goods Vehicle, though I had been charged £230, the rate for a Private Light Goods Vehicle, when I paid the final balance! This clearly demonstrated the difference between the reality (over 3500 kg) and the advertisement and the salesmen's story that the motorhome was under that limit.

Browsing the Marquis website, Margaret noticed that our caravan was for sale for £11,495! This was after only 4 days. Marquis had allowed us a mere £8,247 for the trade-in, a mark-up of £3,248 or 40%. We immediately wrote an email to the Sales Manager, John Ivell, expressing our amazement at this profiteering at our expense. Did they really own the caravan whilst a dispute over the selling of the motorhome was in progress?

We also mentioned the evidence of mis-selling provided by the VED discrepancy.

13 July 2014: John Ivell replied with an apology for the presence of the caravan on their website (it takes time to remove it) but said there were notes in the system advising that it was not for sale. He also claimed that the VED was included in the selling price and it was administered through head office.

This clearly is not the case, since it was shown as a separate item on the invoice and was easily changed by the salesmen on the spot when we asked for 12 months rather than six. John Ivell missed the main point: that it demonstrated the difference between the reality (over 3500 kg) and the salesmen's story that the motorhome was under that limit.

Complaints:

1. From the beginning, the motorhome should not have been listed on the Marquis website and elsewhere as 3400 kg.
2. From the beginning, I should not have been allocated a Sales Executive with such dysfunctionally limited knowledge and experience of motorhomes.
3. The salesman should have known about the relationship between GVW, VED, driving licence categories and the relevance of the age of the driver.
4. The salesman should have known this was crucial information and should have confirmed the GVW figure with an independent check.
5. The above failings led me to purchase a vehicle which was of no use to me, since it was actually illegal for me to drive it.
6. Unknown to me, I twice drove the motorhome illegally: on the test drive with Mike Gratton, and in taking it from the dealership in Dinnington to the campsite in Worksop.
7. There was an element of fraud in Marquis buying a VED disk for a Private Heavy Goods Vehicle (£165) and charging me the rate for a Private Light Goods Vehicle (£230). The former would have confirmed that the GVW was over 3500 kg, the latter confirmed that it was assumed to be less than 3500 kg. The two people involved separately in these transactions never met or consulted!
8. The weighbridge data of 3460 kg showed that the motorhome would clearly be over 3500 kg when a suitable payload (say 500 kg) was added. There is no scope for having its GVW reduced from 4150 kg to 3500 kg.
9. It was inappropriate on two occasions for the Sales Manager to ask me to talk to Mike Gratton about these issues and how they might be resolved. Mike was too implicated in the problems; in any case the ultimate cause, responsibility and solution lay with management.
   

Implications

We have had to waste a great deal of time and money on this fruitless exercise.

1. It has taken from 23 June 2014 until today, 12 July 2014, to process this purchase and the matter is still not resolved after nearly 3 weeks.
2. We returned from Greece to the UK for the main purpose of purchasing this motorhome. The total cost of this journey – fuel, ferries, road tolls, campsites, time – is almost incalculable
3. We have spent 23 days waiting on a campsite in Worksop at £20 per night!
4. We insured the Autocruise Starblazer motorhome with Safeguard from 1 July, as requested by Marquis (so that the VED disk could be purchased). That policy will now have to be cancelled, involving an administration fee plus the charge for 14 days or more of non-use.
5. We cancelled the insurance on the VW Crafter van used to tow the caravan, assuming that we would be driving the Autocruise motorhome. The cancellation had to be done within 14 days of 1 July, in order to transfer the VW's NCD to the motorhome policy with Safeguard. The cancellation also incurred an administration fee.
6. We cancelled the insurance on the Lunar Quasar caravan from the date of its delivery to Marquis, also incurring an administration fee. This caravan may now need to be insured once again.
7. We subsequently had to reinstate the VW insurance, without an NCD and therefore at considerable cost, in order to have transport (since I cannot drive the motorhome) and to have somewhere to load and store the contents of the motorhome, and to keep open the option of towing the Lunar Quasar caravan.